


The Last Time

by foggys



Series: The Triumphant and the Lost [1]
Category: Gymnastics RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Olympic Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 16:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foggys/pseuds/foggys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nastia knows that something is wrong, even as she glides into a kip, at the very beginning.</p>
<p>Nastia Liukin's fall on the uneven bars in the 2012 Olympic Trials, Day 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Time

Nastia knows that something is wrong, even as she glides into a kip, at the very beginning.

It’s just wrong. The feel of it, the swing, the flow…she wants to stop and start over, but she’s in front of ten thousand people and in a major competition, not just practicing on her favorite set of bars back at WOGA.

(And she knows exactly why she’s feeling this way. She hasn’t trained nearly enough.)

So she keeps going, trying to erase every error from her mind, to melt herself into her mindless routine. Bars is her best apparatus; she knows what it should feel like.

She tilts a little to the side after the first Orio, but she has to keep going. Then her hips buckle after the Healy, and she feels her chance for being on the team again float away. She strains a bit more. She has to get everything else right, and she does the Orio ½ correctly.

Hope sparks inside her as she swings down, gaining momentum each millisecond. Then she releases, and keeps her legs together and toes pointed, but she flies too far out, and she grabs for the bar, and she misses, and she falls.

The impact leaves her entire body stinging, and she’s kind of in shock. She can hear the entire audience gasp, and see her dad right next to her. Then she remembers where she is, so she pushes herself up.

Tears brim her eyes, and she stretches her jaw out and turns her neck with all her might to stop crying. She knows that it’s over. 

She supposes it’s been over for a while. She thinks back to the years she’s wasted. Regret strikes her so deeply that she just wants to curl up into a ball in her own bed, in Texas. But she’s in competition, and her thirty seconds are ticking away. She walks toward the chalk bowl, moving her neck and rotating her jaw, and chalks up her hands. She concentrates on breathing through her mouth. She can’t cry. She can’t cry.

She has to finish the routine; she can’t give up. She’s Nastia Liukin, all-around Olympic champion, uneven bars silver medalist, and she has to finish with elegance, grace. It’s her last meet, she realizes as she ducks under the low bar, and tears flood into her eyes again. She rolls her neck and shrugs her shoulders. She’s got to finish.

Her dad is saying something, she realizes. She says that she’s fine, and he starts to walk off. “Wait, help me up?” she asks, glancing at him. He returns, and his hand go around the sides of her waist, and she prepares to jump.

She catches the high bar, and kips. She must finish. She flies over the bar in her Tkachev, and grabs it again. She kips and casts, swings, lets go. She catches the Pak, too.

She’s finishing the way she should, she thinks, and she’s a little happier.

But then the dismount is coming up. She’s only practiced it a few times with her routine, and her arms are starting to burn. She remembers what happened in the Visas, at podium training, and in the Visas.

She can’t let that happen again. She’s Nastia, and she can do this.

She swings with all her might into the giant, tucks her knees in, and flies into her dismount. She staggers, but steps forward again.

She finished.

It’s her last bar routine in competition, and she’s going to miss it. So she raises her arms slowly, absorbing the feeling of the crowd cheering for her one last time. Heart overflowing with wistfulness, she walks slowly off the mat. She can’t really feel anything as she hops off the podium. Her father’s arms surround her, and she wants to cry again.

The crowd still cheers. It’s loud, encouraging, but she doesn’t want to hear it anymore. It’s over. Everything’s over.

She walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> So, hi, anyone who's reading this. This is my first fanfiction on AO3, and though it isn't for a large fandom, exactly, I'm still kind of excited.
> 
> I'm actually counting the days until my first hit. This archive is so tiny.
> 
> I have other ones like this coming up, if you liked this piece. This was just the easiest for me to do first, because I was actually present while Nastia fell.
> 
> Um... what normal things do other people say on their notes?


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